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Saturday, June 2, 2012

Something bigger

When my thoughts become difficult to
think, and unproductive too –- when I lie at night and think of the
words I want to say to him, the insults I want to hurl, the apologies
I want to seek –- I wrap myself instead in the mountains and the
sea, those two disparate worlds that meet here at sharp angles. I
close my eyes and imagine the fiddleheads unfurling in the forest
while I sleep, the rocks on the beach turning over themselves,
turning, turning as the tide pulls in and pushes out, breathing, the
whole earth breathing and pulsing while my body, close to sleep,
strives for the same. We breathe together, the earth and I, resting
when it's time to rest and growing when it's time to grow. I close my
eyes at night and escape consciousness into a dreamworld of
possibilities. The light grows longer and longer each night, and
while my cells and neurons regenerate, ferns spread across bare
ground, shoots of fireweed and lupine stretch higher, the starfish in
the sea crawl across beds of mussels and clams looking for food. Eat,
grow, move, search, die back – we are all in this together. When my
thoughts seem like the biggest thing around, I lay back and let the
mountains envelop me, squeezing out everything else, their white
snowfield arms encircling me, tucking me deep into the green folds of
their forests.

I think of Edward Abbey. For 227
pages now, I have been incredulously admirable of his solitary life, and finally, I get a
hint that there is more: “I strip and lay back in the sun," he writes, "with
nothing between me and the universe but my thoughts. Deliberately I
compose my mind, quieting the febrile buzzing of cells and circuits,
and strive to open my consciousness directly, nakedly to the cosmos.
Under the influence of cosmic rays I try for cosmic intuitions –
and end up earthbound as always, with a vision not of the universe
but of a small and mortal particular, unique and disparate … her
smile, her eyes in firelight, her touch.” Later: “I walk among
thistles and coarse dying goldenrod … and ponder the meaning of my
solitude. Reaching no conclusions.”

If Abbey can reach no conclusions, what
can I, mere mortal, hope to come up with? Even with the shadow of
mountains and emptiness of wind and eternity of the sea all around
me, there are no conclusions to be reached. But I can still surrender
to the earth, let it grow and push itself into the crevices of my
consciousness, let it wrap itself around me like a choking vine, a
vine that continues to leaf out and unfurl its tendrils while I
sleep, soundly, striving for peace.

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About Me

I'm Krista. I write stories about the intersection of people, places and nature. Formally, I'm a contributor at High Country News, a non-profit environmental news magazine once called "a scrappy institution that produces some of the finest journalism in the American West." My work has also been published in Slate, Orion, Alaska magazine, New Zealand Wilderness magazine, the Denver Post, Adventure Journal, and a number of other newspapers and websites. See more at www.kristaleelanglois.com.